Liquid crystal devices that are incorporated in recent electronic instruments, such as portable telephones, portable information terminals or game machines, are demanded of cost reduction and lower power consumption. In case of a passive matrix type liquid crystal device, those demands are fulfilled by a multi-line selection (hereinafter abbreviated as MLS) driving scheme.
According to the MLS driving scheme, plural lines of scan electrodes are selected at a time and potentials which have a given orthogonal relationship and correspond to a selected pattern are applied to the associated scan electrodes in each of fields constituting one frame. Similarly, potentials which correspond to a pattern of pixels that are turned on and off and a selected pattern of the scan electrodes are applied to the associated signal electrodes. This scheme can set the effective values of voltages to be applied to the individual electrodes to the required values without raising the potential levels to be applied.